XII
We left Ms. Zelda’s boardinghouse around ten o’clock that morning and made a brief trip uptown to The Buchanan.
Between the smell of smoke on my clothing and sex on my person, I was feeling particularly grubby, never mind that I was in desperate need of a shave and had also lost my hat amid the chaos from the night before.
After our detour, we walked east toward the Second Avenue El.
Gunner was, of course, gorgeous in another head-to-toe black wardrobe, save for the glint of his silver watch chain.
His face was smooth—I had, erm, made certain of that before stepping out the front door of my apartment—and despite his preferred perfume being near a decade out of style, I couldn’t imagine anything more fitting than the spicy woodsy Sandringham he wore.
“Scally caps suit you,” Gunner had said, prompted by nothing other than the fact that I’d lost my second nice bowler since being in his company and had been forced to unearth a tweed flat cap from my closet before we’d left.
I’d absently touched the brim and answered, “Makes me look like a boy.”
“I think you look very handsome.”
I admit, as we walked across the avenues bustling with the upper class enjoying their day off and the lower class working as if New Year’s Day was like any other, I’d admired my reflection a few times in the windows of business fronts.
Fulton Fish Market sat one block north of Pier 17.
And while the market served a mostly wholesale clientele these days, the oyster vendors were still parked on the curbs with their carts and stoves, serving to passerby and employee alike.
Gunner and I stood huddled around one on the corner of Front and Fulton, cold air whipping off the East River at our backs.
Gunner reached across the makeshift countertop, picked up a glass bottle, and drizzled vinegar atop his freshly shucked raw oysters. “Patrick Tuffey,” he prompted, before knocking back an oyster.
“One of Driscoll’s inner circle,” I answered.
“O’Dea said that Tuffey witnessed a trade-off between Fishback, now deceased, and a mechanical man that fits the description of the one that hightailed it last night.” Gunner picked up another shell and asked, “How reliable is O’Dea?”
I sprinkled some salt on my own oysters while saying, “His reports are often hearsay, but he doesn’t fabricate or embellish those details.
He’s a trusted, if obnoxious, informant.
” I swallowed the oyster, cool and slick and a little briny, then picked up another.
“His story pairs with what happened last night. Tuffey said, before his chest was blown apart, he only wanted to bankrupt Tick Tock. Sounds to me like he figured out which warehouse was being used for storage of their shipments and set it ablaze.”
“Unbeknownst to him, it was a powder keg.”
“Literally.” I slurped down the second oyster. “The gangster who aided Gatling Man’s escape, that’s a fellow by the name of McCarthy. He’s a Whyo, but judging by his appearance on the scene, I’d say he’s another of the double-dealing sort. He told me, this means war .”
Gunner stared at the oyster vendor for a moment, a man who was doing his very best to not appear interested in our conversation. “Gatling Man took out Fishback.”
“Never mind the bullet caliber matching, we’ve already established the timeline makes it impossible to have been Mechanical Man.”
“What if there are more of these magical, semimechanical humans about the city?” Gunner drizzled more vinegar on another oyster. “More than two, that is.”
I considered this comment, a mirror of Moore’s concern, while helping myself to more shellfish. “I think, if I were the betting sort, I’d be going home with heavy pockets. Remember what Addison said about the lookouts Tuffey saw at the handoff—never being heard from again?”
Gunner nodded.
“Tuffey also said something about playing God.” I waited until the vendor turned his back to stoke his coal fire and collect some oysters frying in a pan of oil before leaning close to Gunner and whispering, “Sure as hell sounds as if someone is building an army of some sort.”
“Out of low-tier, double-dealing Whyos.”
“Right.”
Gunner finished his last oyster and said, “It’s rather brilliant. This gang, despite their brutal disorganization, seems too powerful and widespread to be easily replaced by a new name. Am I correct in that assumption?”
“You are.”
“Then what better way to rid the streets of competition than to take it down from the inside out? A wound Driscoll doesn’t even know is festering yet.” Gunner reached into his pocket and set several coins—too many—on the countertop.
“Thank you, sir,” the vendor said. “Happy New Year.”
“It was only twelve cents for the two of us,” I said as I put on one glove and led the way toward the piers.
“Courtesy of Wells Fargo.”
“I shouldn’t allow you to pay for meals with procured funds.”
“By all means, stop me, Agent Hamilton.”
I rolled my eyes and managed to restrain a smile.
With the advent of steam technology by the end of 1865, Vanderbilt had been one of the first businessmen to embrace the concept of air travel for the masses with the construction of Grand Central—his pièce de résistance.
The world followed in his footsteps after the first airships successfully landed and passengers disembarked through the palace he’d built.
From Wells Fargo replacing their stagecoaches with zeppelins in ’73, to the import and export companies along the East River petitioning the city to remodel the piers to accept goods by air instead of water in ’75, the world had turned to the skies and never looked back to the ground in remorse.
The original structure of Pier 17 was still utilized, but merely as a boardwalk to reach the ramps and pneumatic lifts to the airship landings overhead.
It wasn’t at full capacity today, what with the holiday, but zeppelins were still coming and going at a constant rate—the pier in ever-shifting shadows as massive steam-filled canvases blotted out the sun.
Workmen stacked crates all along the pier, foremen signed off on cargo receipts for captains, and overhead was the constant bickering and barking of airship crewmen.
“What makes you think O’Dea’s California architect is involved?” Gunner asked, following at my side, hands in his winter coat pockets so as to keep the Waterbury concealed. “He’d only heard the name, not that the name was directly tied to Tick Tock.”
“Fishback told Moore and me that the packages came from out West—specifically California or Arizona.”
“That connection is tenuous at best.”
I stopped to study a stack of wooden crates taller than myself, checked the leaflet on one to confirm its provenance, then kept walking.
“There are two hundred and thirty-five registered casters in the country. The FBMS estimates at least an additional one hundred are alive and well, but not yet registered.”
Keeping my arms to my sides, I turned my bare left hand out and followed the ebb and flow of magic.
Even here, at the southernmost point of Manhattan, I could still feel the rip in the atmosphere above Hester Street.
I could feel the hurt of the energy, like an animal licking its wounds.
And I could feel that invisible, tangible barrier between me and the raw power become just a bit more dense as the manufactured spells were slowly but surely being woven into the planet’s magical atmosphere.
“There’s about a third the number of architects in the country—”
“One hundred and eleven,” Gunner supplied. “Give or take.”
“Er—yes. Seventy-five of whom are registered, and eighteen have been arrested since ’65 for illegal magic.”
“You believe one of the unaccounted for eighteen is the architect working with Tick Tock?” Gunner concluded.
“Correct. Of course, for an enterprise such as his, this would require an architect of noted strength, which reduces the count even further. The average skill level of scholars, architects, and casters in this country is two point five.”
Gunner stopped walking and looked down. “What sort of level would be required?”
I met Gunner’s gaze and offered a noncommittal shrug.
He seemed to understand that.
“ So ,” I continued, “if Addison has intelligence on an architect located on the other side of the country, it’s likely the news traveled for good reason.”
My fingers twitched as I came into contact with the remnants of days-old magic. I turned away from Gunner, shifted my focus, and followed the weak, glittering trail toward a shipment coming off a dinky airship sputtering and wheezing steam from its aft-end.
“Excuse me,” I said, approaching a foreman counting the crates as they were piled onto the pier. “What’s this shipment?”
He paused his count, finger still pointing at the nearest container, and looked down at me. He was built like the side of a barn—tall and wide and red in the face. “Who’s fuckin’ askin’?”
I pulled back my coat lapels to show my badge.
“Special Agent Gillian Hamilton with the Federal Bureau of Magic and Steam.” To the left, a dock worker pushing a full box cart down the ramp from the airship slowed to watch our interaction.
I returned my attention to the foreman and repeated, “What’s the shipment? ”
“It ain’t nothing you magic coppers ought to be concerned with,” the foreman answered.
“Special Agent,” I corrected. “And if that’s the case, you should have no issue showing me the provenance.”
The foreman raised his clipboard out of my reach. “I know my rights.”
“Don’t make this difficult,” I answered.
“I’ll do as I damn well— hey !”
Gunner had, unnoticed by us both, approached from the right and snatched the clipboard from overhead. He handed it to me while keeping his gaze trained on the foreman. “I believe Agent Hamilton requested you not be difficult.”
I accepted the clipboard, gave the documents a cursory once-over, then asked, “Pinkerton’s Ladies Wear?”
“Aye, you arrogant son of a—”